Quotes Blood Rites

[notevendarkyet]

Re Harry's basement: On one side of the living room there was a shallow alcove with a wood-burning stove, an old-fashioned icebox, and some cabinets that held my cooking ware and groceries. On the other, a narrow doorway led to my bedroom and bath. There was barely enough room for my twin bed and a secondhand dresser.

~~~

"Hey, Murphy," I called. "When are you gonna stop picking on little kids and fight someone your own size?"
Murphy flicked her tail over her shoulder, her eyes shining. "Come say that to my face, Dresden."
"Give me a minute to amputate my legs and I will," I responded.

~~~

"Why don’t you just, you know . . . not show up."
"I need a good excuse not to show up, or my mother won’t let me hear the end of it."
"So lie."
Murphy shook her head. "She’d know. She’s psychic or something."
I felt my eyebrows go up. "Well, gee, Murph. I guess I’ll just try to arrange things so that the deadly monster threat will be convenient to ducking your annual family fun-fest. Your sense of priorities once more astounds me."
She grimaced. "Sorry. I spend time dreading this every year. Things are sort of hard between me and my mother. Family skews your sanity. I don’t expect you to under—"

~~~

Her mouth twisted into the shape it got when she tried to hold back laughter. "Is that a puppy in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"

~~~

There is a whole spectrum of magical energies that are difficult to define or understand. There are thousands of names for them, in every culture—mana, psychic energy, totem, juju, chi, bioethereal power, the Force, the soul. It’s an incredibly complex system of interweaving energy that influences good old Mother Earth around us, but it all boils down to a fairly simple concept: Shit happens.

~~~

A second later the door opened and Murphy glared up at me, blue eyes bright and cold. "Get more away. I’ve been fighting this computer all day long. I swear, if you blow out my hard drive again, I’m taking it out of your ass."
"Why would your hard drive be in my ass?" I said.
Murphy’s eyes narrowed.
"Ah, hah, hah, heh. Yeah, okay. I’ll be going, then."

~~~

I frowned. Murphy wasn’t really a "whatever" sort of person. I tried to remember the last time I had seen Murphy that short and abrupt. When she’d been in the midst of post-traumatic stress, she’d been remote but not angry. When she was keyed up for a fight or feeling threatened, she’d be furious but she didn’t draw away from her friends.
The only thing that had come close to this was when she thought I was involved in a string of supernatural killings. From where she’d been standing, it looked like I had betrayed her trust, and she had expressed her anger with a right cross that had chipped one of my teeth.
Something was upsetting her. A lot.

~~~

Murphy finished the candy bar. "My baby sister is engaged. She’s going to be showing up this weekend with her fiancé, and I am going to be there without a fiancé or a husband. Or even a boyfriend. My mother will never let me hear the end of it."
"Well, uh, you had a husband, right? Two of them, even."
She glared. "The Murphys are Irish Catholic," she said. "My not one but two, count them, two divorces won’t exactly wash clean the stigma."
"Oh. Well, I’m sure whoever you’re dating would show up with you, right?"
She glanced back toward the SI offices. If looks could kill, hers would have blown that section of the building into Lake Michigan. "Are you kidding? I don’t have time. I haven’t been on a date in two years."

~~~

"The mighty Murphy. Slayer of various and sundry nasty monsters, vampires, and so on—"
"And trolls," Murphy said. "Two more when you were out of town last summer."
"Uh-huh. And you’re letting a little family shindig get you down like this?"
She shook her head. "Look. It’s a personal thing. Between me and my mom."
"And your mom is going to think less of you for being single? A career woman?" I regarded her skeptically. "Murphy, don’t tell me you’re a mama’s girl under all the tough-chick persona."
She stared at me for a moment, exasperation and sadness sharing space on her features. "I’m the oldest daughter," she said. "And . . . well, the whole time I was growing up, I just assumed that I’d be . . . her successor, I guess. That I’d follow her example. We both did. It’s one of the things that made us close. The whole family knew it."
"And if your baby sister is all of a sudden more like your mom than you are, what? It threatens your relationship with her?"
"No," she said, annoyance in her tone. "Not like that. Not really. And sort of. It’s complicated."
"I can see that," I said.
She slumped against the vending machine. "My mom is pretty cool," Murphy said. "But it’s been hard to stay close to her the past few years. I mean, the job keeps me busy. She doesn’t think I should have divorced my second husband, and that’s been between us a little. And I’ve changed. The past couple of years have been scary. I learned more than I wanted to know."
I winced. "Yeah. Well. I tried to warn you about that."
"You did," she said. "I made my choice. I can handle living with it. But I can’t exactly sit down and chat with her about it. So it’s one more thing that I can’t talk about with, my mother. Little things, you know? A lot of them. Pushing us apart."
"So talk to her," I said. "Tell her there’s stuff you can’t talk about. Doesn’t mean you don’t want to be around her."
"I can’t do that."
I blinked. "Why not?"
"Because I can’t," she said. "It just doesn’t work like that."

~~~

I may not have understood the problem, but Murphy was my friend. She was obviously hurting, and that’s all I really needed to know. "Look, Murph, maybe you’re making more of it than you need to. I mean, seems to me that if your mom cares about you, she’d be as willing as you are to talk."
"She doesn’t approve of my career," Murphy said tiredly. "Or my decision to live alone, once I was divorced. We’ve already done all the talking on those subjects and neither one of us is going to budge."
Now that I could understand. I’d been on the receiving end of Murphy’s stubborn streak before, and I had a chipped tooth to show for it. "So you haven’t shown up at the reunion, where you’d see her and have to avoid all kinds of awkward topics, for the past two years."
"Something like that," Murphy said. "People are talking. And we’re all Murphys, so sooner or later someone is going to start giving unasked-for advice, and then it will be a mess. But I don’t know what to do. My sister getting engaged is going to get everyone talking about subjects I’d rather slash my wrists than discuss with my uncles and cousins."
"So don’t go," I said.
"And hurt my mom’s feelings a little more," she said. "Hell, probably make people talk even more than if I was there."
I shook my head. "Well. You’re right about one thing. I don’t understand it, Murph."
"’S okay," she said.
"But I wish I did," I said. "I wish I worried about my uncle’s opinions, and had problems to work out with my mom. Hell, I’d settle for knowing what her voice sounded like." I put a hand on her shoulder. "Trite but true—you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. People change. The world changes. And sooner or later you lose people you care about. If you don’t mind some advice from someone who doesn’t know much about families, I can tell you this: Don’t take yours for granted. It might feel like all of them will always be there. But they won’t."
She looked down, so that I wouldn’t see a tear fall, I guess.
"Talk to her, Karrin."
"You’re probably right," she said, nodding. "So I’m not going to kill you for shoving your well-intentioned opinion down my throat in a vulnerable moment. Just this once."
"That’s decent of you," I said.

~~~

More to come.

~~~


And he doesn’t believe in using surgically altered . . . uh . . ."
My face heated up. Murphy was probably my best friend, but she was still a girl, and a gentleman just doesn’t say some words in front of a lady. I held the phone with my shoulder and made a cupping motion in front of my chest with both hands. "You know."
"Boobs?" Murphy said brightly. "Jugs? Hooters? Ya-yas?"
"I guess."
She continued as if I hadn’t said anything. "Melons? Torpedoes? Tits? Gazongas? Knockers? Ta-tas?"
"Hell’s bells, Murph!"